Less Than Settled

I'm feeling less than settled, which is not to say bummed, but I did get to go talk it over at therapy just before, so that's good. I'm essentially okay, however

my sinus issues have now become a really bad toothache, which I've had before, but that doesn't mean I like it any better. I just recognized what it was this time before I bothered the dentist about it. I still have the headache too, off and on.

the whole SCM thing is still bothering me.

I had my house cleaned today, which was terrific, until about an hour after they left, I found something broken. I'm sure it was an accident; I mean, I think they may have knocked it over on their way out and didn't even realize it, but it was something very special to me, a black and white Mickey Mouse figure that the Hubs got me once for Christmas, which means he actually went to a mall for me. It's making me sad. I don't think I'll get reimbursed for it, which is okay, but I really wish it could be fixed. I'll have to ask the Chum, when she's home from Maine, which should be any day now. She taught pottery for thirty years, so I guess she'll know what to do. But it was quite a shock when I glanced down on my way out the door and saw Mickey's decapitated head laying there.

The My Lobotomy book that I'm reading is also quite a lot to think about. Remember the other day when I posted the family picture and said that Aunt Sarah wasn't quite right, had medical issues? Well. Now I'm thinking I might know what they were, and the thoughts are not pleasant. I already know that she was treated for depression in an institution before I was born. That would be the late 1940s or early 1950s. And now the book is making me think .... again, well. I need to talk to my sister; the thing is that no one who knows the truth is still alive, except, sort of, Aunt Sarah's daughter, but she has Alzheimer's, so, no help there. Quite a strange family secret I feel that I have somehow stumbled across.

Okay, then, so let me just post and change a load of laundry and call that sister.


WATCHING THE FAMILY GUY :: ENTRY #1877
READING: My Lobotomy by Howard Dully and Charles Fleming

Time Keeps On Slippin'

Or in this case, moving backwards. How is it possible that the SCM left for lunch over two hours ago, but according to the clock on my desk, only FIFTEEN minutes have gone by? FIFTEEN MINUTES? Not possible, I think.

Okay, so it was an interesting morning at home today. K must have gotten up at five or so, but I never saw her at all until I was all done and ready, which was maybe 6:30. I called upstairs just to make sure she was awake -- foolish, foolish me -- and I got the exasperated "WHAT?" in response, so, okay. For the ten minutes that she was in the kitchen before I left, she was not fit for human conversation, so I didn't make any. She was so anxious, poor thing, about her first day at the school where she'll be student teaching. And it's not like she hasn't put in full days substituting before, but this is different. I won't see her until after her class tonight, by which time she should be good and worn out, but I hope, conversational, because I really do want to hear all about her day.

You may or may not remember my quest a couple of years ago to gather posters for the library walls. Well, last spring I learned about a grant that nearly anyone in a school could apply for, which I did and got, and today I received nice big laminated posters of American art, along with a book that helps teachers use them in their classes. I am very psyched, but now I need to figure out how to get them all hung up on the cinderblock walls. I'd like to put them up, each with one of the questions from the teacher's guide next to it. A nice big project that takes time and thought and will really make a noticeable change in the library. Cool.

Oh, Art! I couldn't leave a comment at your site for some reason, so HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Speaking of time, I was thinking the other day, If I had a time machine, where/when would I go? Not that I'm getting a time machine, of course, but this thought has occurred to me one or twelve times over the years. I always thought that I would go back and spend more time with my grandparents. (More on that in a minute.) But when it buzzed through my head the other day, I thought, Hey, go back to like maybe 1972 -- nineteen was a very good year for me -- and tell me to take better care of myself! I would tell me to exercise, or walk every day, or really, do those Kegel things (you know what those are, ladies), and kick junk food out of my diet then because one day I would just break out in fat, and while I'm at it, don't start smoking, and have a glass of wine with dinner from time to time. And use sunscreen, because there's this atmospheric problem looming on the horizon and we're all gonna get skin cancer if we don't watch out.

Odd thoughts drift through my head as I'm trying to fall asleep, which I suppose is common, but yesterday when I was off, I put my head down to take a nap in the afternoon and all of a sudden, playing through my head as if I had just put the record on, I heard Mary Martin as Peter Pan singing to Wendy, Michael, and Jane: Think. Lovely. Thoughts! Which is what she said after she sprinkled the fairy dust on them and they had to think lovely thoughts to fly, and they said things like candy! and other inconsequential things and then Mary/Peter says "Lovelier thoughts, Michael!" and he beams "Christmas!" and he goes up in the air. So I heard Think. Lovely. Thoughts! and Lovelier thoughts! and I heard my own answers:

Grampa
Parvin
Main Street
Epcot

My first lovely thought is always Grampa Sam, whose mother I wrote about the other day, so I guess he's very fresh in my mind. If there is indeed a heaven, his will be the first face I see when I get there. I could go on and on, but, you know.

Parvin is Parvin State Park in South Jersey, near Vineland. When the kids were small, we went there for vacation, rented a little cabin and otherwise were out in the woods. I think we went four times. It was very peaceful and pleasant there, in many ways. One afternoon there, I was lying on a lounge chair while the Hubs was someplace off with the girls, who were quite little then, and I thought "This is my happy place." It was pre-brain surgery. The year I had the surgery was the year we stopped going.

Main Street, of course, is in the Magic Kingdom at DisneyWorld. When I go through the gates and then I'm on Main Street, it's like I'm filled up with happy.

Epcot. I've probably told this before, but there's a nondescript place just outside the Epcot turnstiles that is special to the Sibs and me. When we went there after my brain surgery, which was also after she'd been through all kinds of stuff, we went to Epcot first, and at this particular spot we both looked at each other and realized that we were thinking the same thing: we made it, we're okay, we're alive, we're really here. I've told my kids that it's where I want them to scatter my ashes, although that probably breaks a million laws.

It's 1:25 now, so time did move some. I'm back from lunch, and about to start going through all my neat art posters.

Later. I went to a site to see what my Palin family name would be. It's Claw. I'm just saying.

I am looking forward to the debate tonight, but really, anything could happen. I keep seeing more bits and pieces of Palin's interview with Katie Couric, and they are nothing if not intriguing. Well, let's save comment on this until tomorrow, eh?

Oh, I miscounted yesterday; I've voted in 10 presidential elections. Which makes my winning percentage worse. Help a pal out, wouldja?

WATCHING GILMORE GIRLS :: ENTRY #1869
READING: Welcome to the World, Baby Girl! by Fannie Flagg

Question

Cardiogirl posted this today from The Book of Questions by Gregory Stock, Ph.D.

It's Question 164. (The italicized questions are the followups to the main question.)

If someone offered you a large amount of money for some information about one of your company’s products, would you accept it? Assume you know you won’t be discovered. How do feel about taking a sick day at work when you aren’t ill? Have you ever made unauthorized, personal, long-distance phone calls or taken tools or supplies from work? Have you ever falsified a time card or an expense report? If through a computer error you were given too large a paycheck, would you report it? Do you see such moral choices as black-and-white issues?

I read the main question in a completely different way than Cardiogirl did, but I'll answer both. She said that she would never give away information about her company for money. I originally read this as a kind of whistle-blower thing, like if I worked for a company that was polluting a river or something, would I tell that for money? My answer is that I would tell that for no money. As for the original intent of the question, no, I wouldn't do that.

How about taking a sick day when you're not ill? Well, yes, I have done this a lot, and I don't feel guilty about it all. I know they're called sick days, but I have always seen them as days that are there for when you need them for something, sick or not. Sometimes it was because one of my children was sick, and sometimes it was because I had to clean the house before company came. When it's a day that you take because you can't stand to go in there one more day, we at school call these "mental health" days, and they are as valid as fever/vomit kind of sick days.

Long distance phone calls? No, I don't think I've ever done that, or needed to. Oh wait, I do remember years ago having to make long-distance phone calls from work, but I would charge them to my home phone number. I haven't needed to do anything like that for a long time.

Taken tools or supplies from work? Technically, yes, but I don't feel guilty about this either because it's a wash. If I need a roll of tape for home, I take it from the library's supplies. If I need gluesticks in the library, I go out and buy them. If I buy a book that was good but I feel no need to keep, I bring it in and add it to the library collection. Last year, when I bought all the posters for the library, we only had enough money in petty cash to pay me back for about half of it, so I don't feel guilty at all when I bring home a file folder, or use the photocopier for something personal. It works out even, more or less, I suppose.

Time card or expense report? I've never ever falsified those few expense reports I've had to turn in (except that I've never asked to be reimbursed for mileage because I can't do the math, so that's falsification in their favor), and we don't have time cards, as such, and I admit I am flexible with my hours. We're supposed to sign in by the sign-in time (7:55) and sign out at or after the sign-out time (3:05.) I haven't signed out in 20 years; I decided not to when I didn't one day and I got a note in my mailbox the next morning from the then principal asking why I hadn't, and I wrote back that when I left the building the night before at 10:00 PM -- we had been decorating for prom -- the office was locked. I got the same note the next day and sent the same answer. After that, I never signed out and no one has ever complained. Now that the library is on the other side of the building from the office, I am certainly never walking all the way over there to sign out when my car is just outside the library. And I do generally leave around 3:00, if I can, but I get there at 7:00, so, once again, I figure it's a wash. Teachers are generally expected to put in more time than the clock says, and I do, I just do it in the morning when I'm alert and not in the afternoon when I'm dead. And we have kids waiting to get in by 7:15.

An extra large paycheck? Would that t'were! No, seriously, if there was a mistake in my paycheck, it would turn up somewhere else, and my last paycheck for the year would probably be zero, and that would suck. It's never a good idea to mess around with your paycheck; you have to tell someone right away or you will ultimately get screwed. This isn't even an honesty thing; it's a self-protective thing. So, yes, I would certainly report it. I tell cashiers they've given me too much change, if I notice it before I get home. If it was a large amount -- $10 or $20 or more -- and I noticed it after I got home, I would go back and tell them.

Black and white issues? Very little is black and white, or should be assumed to be so. Yes, there are some values that are absolute, but sometimes things are not so clear when it comes to applying them. And not to get sappy, but this is why children need good parents, and teachers of literature and history and science, so they can learn to develop good judgments and make them when necessary. (I still don't know why everyone needs to learn math.)

WATCHING THE GOLDEN GIRLS :: ENTRY #1790

On To the Rest of My Day

(There was an earlier entry today, but really, it's not worth it.)

So, it's about 7:50 a.m., and K calls to say she's been in an accident. (Shit.) She sounded okay and said she was okay, and said there wasn't much damage on the car, but she didn't really know what to do, so I said to get all the other person's information, call the police, yada yada yada, and call me back. She hasn't called back yet. I don't know if she continued on to the gym or just went home. I really hate to think of damage on her six-week old car. I also really really hope it was the other person who hit her. And certainly, the second I heard the word "accident" my guts went into overtime. While I was on that excursion, I ran into the Martian V.P. in the hall and tried to explain to her how degrading it is to have to call someone whenever I have to go to the bathroom, which is her plan. It would be degrading for anyone. I don't think any of this is personal, I just think it's all stupid.

Later (since I'm writing the rest of this roughly twelve hours after I wrote the previous paragraph.) I still haven't seen K's car because she had already gone off to class by the time I got home, but I talked to her later in the day and emailed here and there, and it does seem to have been her fault, but I don't think it's a big deal. It was one of those merging-onto-a-highway things; the car in front of her stopped but she was looking back and she went forward and bumped it. It's the accident that I think everybody has once, and she's driven for seven years now without any accidents at all. I don't think this is even worth reporting to insurance, but she did call the police and so there will be a report. She said she felt bad because the car in front of her was full of Mexican men, and now she's afraid she's responsible for their being deported. Now, for all we know, they're all here legally, so I think that part's an over-reaction, but there ya go.

And last night's epic thunderstorms knocked out the rail line that goes into the city from R's town, so before 8:15 this morning, I'd heard from both of them by phone, which is not a great way to start my day. (R just wanted me to check the NJ Transit website for information.) I also emailed with her later, so the day turned out relatively okay for both of them, but boy, am I tired of putting out fires. I must say though that they pretty much handled their own fires today, they just felt compelled to share them with me.

So, karma. I've been thinking a lot about karma today. It's a concept that really has a place in many religions and cultures. I believe the Christian equivalent is divine retribution. My Orthodox Jewish grandfather and his mother, I know, believed that by doing mitzvahs (good deeds) in this life they would earn their way into heaven, so to speak. I tend to believe that what goes around comes around, or, as it was better put by John Lennon, instant karma's gonna get you.

But true karma, I think, means that your actions in this life will determine in what form you will return in your next life. So I'm trying to figure out in what form my sister's first husband, the one I call here Satan J, could possibly return. At the moment, I'm thinking that his most likely scenario is that he'll be convicted of a crime he didn't commit and then be continually raped in prison for as long as he lives, which should be a long time. He is a vile and worthless human being masquerading as the nice guy next door. I don't wish him illness or ill health in this life -- although he's already got that -- but I do hope that somehow he will reap what he has sown.

Heavens, I am just full of the cliché tonight.

My bento box lunch was just adorable, and very filling. Oh, the sites to look at, if you're so inclined, are laptoplunches.com and justbento.com. When I was putting tomorrow's lunch together just before, I also made tamagoyaki, which is a kind of Japanese omelette served cold in a bento. I haven't eaten it yet, but I'll let you know. Yes, I actually prepared food from scratch. It happens.


WATCHING FAMILY GUY :: ENTRY #1779

The New Year's Thing

[copied from dland]

**In 12 days I will be 50 years old**

The mystique of Happy New Year has always escaped me.

I remember when I was a kid and I would be babysitting on New Year’s Eve, and I would get all excited as I watched the ball drop in Times Square and then I would realize that it was a minute later than it was before, and the clock turns over past midnight every night, and really, why all the fuss? There I would be, sitting alone in somebody else’s house watching TV and thinking, Okay, now what?

I did spend one semi-raucous New Year’s Eve freshman year of college, so that would be 1971-1972. Oddly, I found myself with my two best buddies from college (Maryland) in a house in New Jersey, which belonged to my guy buddy’s best high school friend, except his parents were away and there was no one in the house but the three of us and we got majorly stoned and then laughed at the TV news. For me, this was raucous. We laughed a lot and then fell asleep.

So, whatever. I guess this has some flavor of new beginnings and bad times behind us. I’m all for that. I just don’t get why the clock turning over past midnight tonight is any different from any other midnight. Each day is a new beginning, if that’s what you want to do with it.


ENTRY #36

Who Am I, Anyway?

[copied from dland]

**In 40 days I will be 50 years old**

So I’m sitting there with my therapist last night and I’m telling her about my sucky day in the hospital and how nobody in my family came to see what I was doing there in the Emergency Room for hours and hours, and the first thing is that my cell phone rings. Since it seems like the height of rudeness to answer your cell phone while in therapy, I didn’t. (I only keep it on all the time because I don’t wear a watch anymore since the Purple Chai came into my life.) My issue of last night’s session seemed to be my sense of myself as unimportant and insignificant and have I trained my family to think that I can handle everything and they never need to worry about me. Lots to ponder on. And then the phone rings again on my way home and it’s the Older Daughter, totally panicked. About an hour and a half away at college out of state, she saw on TV that there was a terrible car accident in our town and she couldn’t move on until she knew I was okay and not involved. When I didn’t answer her first call she freaked out, called my Sister, and on and on.

So what was I saying again?

So I’m thinking about this being a speck of dust in the universe and no more meaningful in the grand scheme than a worm or a stereo speaker, and thinking, I ought to write this down. It’s good grist for the Purple Chai mill. I’m thinking, I’m thinking. Still working on it.

But another conversation I had today with my Colleague at work leads me off at a slightly skewed angle. Somehow we got onto the topic of what I was like as a kid, I’m not sure why. I think I said something about being the baby of the family and that I was very indulged, not with things, but with attention. I remarked that I was a little kid who demanded a lot of attention and got it.

She looked stunned. “No,” she said, “that can’t be. They all depended on you, always.”

“I mean when I was three, four, five.”

“No,” she said. “Not possible.”

I tell her that I was a whiny kid, and that they would give in to me just to make me shut up. If I didn’t get my way I would stamp my feet, maybe throw something. (Yes, I was sent to my room here or properly spanked. It was the 1950s, after all.) I tell her that when I was playing games with Grandpa and he had to go to the bathroom that if I didn’t want to stop playing I told him not to go, and he didn’t.

She’s looking at me like I just dropped in from Mars, not knowing what to say now that I have insisted that I am not making this up and she can call Jack at the old people’s place and have him verify it all for her. So finally she says:

“When did you change and become the total opposite?”

Whoa. Who the hell am I, anyway?

I’m the doer who sucks up every negative feeling and hasn’t gotten angry at anyone in about 20 years. I’m the turner of the other cheek. I’m the handler of all bad things, therefore the dumpee of all the crap no one else does or want to do. But I’m still the little whiner inside, it’s just that I learned in my life that other people don’t so much like to be around little whiners, so it’s best to keep that to yourself. I learned that lesson real, real well.

No answers here, except that I am all of it, and I can’t get a handle on it at all. Not at all.


ENTRY #24

On Racism, and Racists

[copied from dland]

In the spring of 1999, I was enrolled along with my sister in a graduate class in Education called Principles of Curriculum Development. It was no such thing. It turned out to be a class, perhaps the only one I’ve ever taken, that cause me to challenge and examine my own beliefs and thoughts about things that I had become cynical or complacent about. The professor was an unusual and fascinating sprite of a man, who challenged us at every opportunity.

One evening he showed us a short video in which a young woman, an undergraduate at the school I was attending, had spoken at a seminar about racism. The seminar had been conducted by a member of the university staff. Both of these individuals were of African-American heritage. Afterwards, we were asked to react to what we had seen, I said that I was saddened because the young woman was in so much pain. At this point, two women in the class with me, the only two individuals in the room (in which all the students were working teachers) who were also of African-American heritage, took me to task for my reaction. A discussion followed. Later that evening, at home, I wrote this reaction to what had happened and later gave it to the professor to read.

“I am angry, and because this is an emotion that is not comfortable for me, I want to intellectualize it, to resolve my anger by having an objective, clear discussion about its cause. But that does not appear to be possible.

Perhaps I was not clear in my response to the video we saw in class. In no way did I mean to negate the repugnancy of racism on any level. I only meant to say that, when I saw the speaker, I saw primarily the personal pain that racism caused her, rather than the social issue of racism itself.

To quote the fictional Ferris Bueller, 'isms, in my opinion, are not good.' I do not tend to see things in the greater societal context; I am more likely to see how individuals are affected by the conditions that surround them. To observe that each person is motivated primarily by his or her perceptions is not to say something especially radical or even strange. It is true on its surface. These individual perceptions can be based on 'isms,' on our sense of how others perceive us and treat us based on those perceptions. As clearly evidenced by the speaker in the video, racism is an insidious, pervasive horror. Certainly the Muslim peoples in the Balkans would agree.

A word or two here about the kinds of words we use when discussing these issues. I do not care for the words 'race', 'color,' 'black' and 'white' in this context because I believe that all of them are used inappropriately. I don’t know exactly what 'race' means; I thought it meant species, and all humans are of the same species. I don’t think it means distinctions made purely on the grounds of skin color. Similarly, I use the expression 'people of color' because it sounds charming; I don’t know if it actually means that much. I prefer not to think of myself as a colorless person. I certainly do not think of myself as 'white.' Not only does this imply being bland and colorless, it also lumps together all those individuals who are not perceived as people of color as if they were the same. No more than all people lumped together under the meaningless term 'black' are all people designated 'white' the same. When I am asked to indicate my ethnicity on a form of some kind, and I am offered several options, including African-American, Hispanic, Native American, White, or other, I feel that I am a victim of racism. What I perceive as my race doesn’t even rate a line on the form. I get the message that I am not a member of a race that counts for anything at all. When I can, I check other. I am not any of those things, and I am not white, either.

I was challenged in class on the grounds that I am not discriminated against based on the color of my skin. This is also clearly true on its surface, and I agree with it now as I did in class. I must also agree that I do not have the capacity to perceive personally what it would be like to experience such discrimination. However, I found it most curious that the individual who said this to me had also stated that she could never understand how the Jews in Nazi Germany could be distinguished from the other people there, the Aryans. Yet this is a perception that has been clear to me from birth. I always knew that the Nazi organization had been able to make this distinction with no trouble at all, and I always knew that I would be perceived as easily, should that time ever come to pass. (In essence, the message I got here was that all 'white people look alike.) Just as I am unable to experience the perception of discrimination based on skin color, this member of the class is unable to experience the perception of discrimination for being Jewish. I imagine that neither of us is capable of experiencing the perception of being an ethnic Albanian in Kosovo. Part of my anger of the moment stems from the fact that I am unable to explain to this classmate (I don't know her name) that this is something we share in common, this inability to feel another person's pain. Yet I sensed very strongly that it is her perception that my sense of being discriminated against in society is not as valid as her own. Certainly it is not as valid in this particular time and place in world history. Yet it is my perception, and so it is as valid as her own, on those grounds alone.

I recently attended a faculty meeting at which the guest speaker was the professor who appeared in the video we saw in class. I found him quite interesting and articulate (as opposed to most of the guest speakers we have at faculty meetings.) He spoke about the perceptions of students 'of color', and indicated that it should be clear to everyone why, because of the situations in which they are raised, we should understand when students 'of color' choose, for example, to sit together in a class. He gave a few other examples of why students 'of color' would choose to group together in various circumstances. I asked him if he would agree that, when students who are generally recognized as 'white' make this same choice, it is perceived by those 'of color' as racism. He agreed that it was. I asked him why it should be perceived as racism on the one hand, but normal social behavior on the other hand. He did attempt to explain his reasoning, which I was unable to understand. He further explained that, for example, when teenagers are at a mall, those who are 'of color' are treated differently than those who are, for example, Jewish or Italian. Incredulous, I asked him after the meeting if he actually believed that, at the mall, he could distinguish between those teenagers who were Jewish or Italian or anything else. I expected some equivocation here, but to my amazement, he replied that he absolutely could tell the difference. When I asked how, he said something about credit cards which show names. (Did this imply that all Jewish teenagers carry credit cards?) This was nonsense. Most teenagers do not carry credit cards, and even if they did, they wouldn't carry them openly. He claimed to be able to distinguish the ethnic identity of teenagers walking around the mall.

The only answer, of course, is that he is very much a perpetuator of racism himself, which he denied quite definitely. The truth is that, although he can see the very real possibility that I might be a racist, he cannot begin to conceive that he might be one himself. The reason for this, I think, is that, just as I am unable to know what it feels like to be discriminated against because of skin color, he is unable to know what it feels like to be discriminated against for any other reason. There is one chief difference between us, and it has nothing to do with skin color or ethnicity. The difference is that I can see that his perceptions are the lens through which he sees the world, and I can understand his right to do so, even though I can't see things through his lens. He, however, cannot understand the possibility that my perceptions cause things to appear to be different to me. He can neither understand this, nor can he acknowledge my right to do so. Like the Supreme Court and pornography, he believes that he knows racism when he sees it. To him, I am wrong, and possibly -- perhaps even very likely -- a racist. I don't think that I am. He, however, is.”


ENTRY #17

I Believe That

[copied from dland]

It’s almost eleven years. It all started around this time of the year, autumn, eleven years ago. It sounded like I had an ear infection all the time, a rushing sound in my right ear. Actually the sound had started during the summer, but sometimes I could make it go away. By October, I had it all the time, and sometimes the throbbing noise. Not a throbbing pain, in fact, no pain at all, but the sound of throbbing in my ear, especially when I would lie down at night to go to sleep. Sometimes I would get up and watch TV, because the sound of the throbbing in a quiet room would drive me crazy. When I could hear the throbbing, it would drown out other sounds, but in and out, in and out. It was like a heartbeat, and whenever it would beat, I could hear nothing else.

It was the throbbing that finally made me ditch the allergist who was treating me for an ear infection and go to see an ear specialist. There were tests, yada yada yada. It was the Friday before Thanksgiving that I went to get the results and while we were waiting for the doctor to come in, sister and I looked at the x-ray in the light box on the wall. There was a silver spot about the size of a quarter, but not quite round, right in the middle of someone’s brain. I saw my name on the x-ray and said “Oh shit, they’re gonna make me go back and get another x-ray. There’s something wrong with that one. There’s a big spot on it.” She didn’t say anything, but I think that was when she figured it out. But not me.

So he came in, the doctor, and took my hand in one of his. Odd, I thought. He said, “It’s not good.” I looked at him. He said, “It’s a brain tumor.” I thought – maybe even said – “You mean that silver thing in my brain is really there?” He nodded. I said “Can you get it out?” He said “Yes.” So it was okay.

I went to see the neurosurgeon the next week, the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. He said it was a tumor, one of three possible kinds. One, he said, a glioma, always malignant. I didn’t want that one. Next, he said, a meningioma, maybe malignant and maybe not, but taking it out would have consequences. I didn’t so much want that one either. Remotely possible, he said, was an acoustic neuroma. Never malignant and would leave me deaf on one side, maybe a little facial paralysis. I was rooting for the acoustic neuroma, even though he said they almost never happen as deep in the brain as my tumor was. “I can have it done after the holidays, right?” I asked. “After Christmas?” “No,” he said.

Nasty day the next day, all the pep rally crap going on in school and me thinking that everything I saw I wouldn’t ever ever see again. I was having Thanksgiving dinner at my house on Thursday like every year, and I figured this was going to be my last one of those, too. Cousin was coming in from Colorado with her new husband. Maybe I wouldn’t ever see her again either.

I came home from school, half day before a holiday. The kids would be home a little later. They really were kids then too, only ten and seven years old. Maybe they wouldn’t even really remember me when they were all grown up.

I sat there, wondering about all kinds of shit. I thought, this will be okay if I can only think of something to hold onto, something that I can plan to do when this is all over. Something that would make me happy.

I said out loud to no one else there, “In April, when spring vacation comes, I’m going to DisneyWorld.” Just sister and I, just the two of us. No kids. “I’m going to DisneyWorld.” And then I was okay.

Went over that afternoon with the kids to see Jack and Shirl, and cousin, and all the assembled family, including my two girls and my sister’s three kids. Nephew #1 was a senior in high school then, in my high school, and going through a lot of crap times. Everybody in the room was depressed except for me. They weren’t sure that I was as okay as I seemed to be. I assured them all that I was fine, because I was going to DisneyWorld. There was a heartbeat’s worth of pause, and then Jack said he’d pay for us to go. So then everybody was okay, pretty much.

On December 17 I went to the hospital at about six a.m. Husband and sister came with me, and stayed while they got me all set up before the operation, with tubes sticking out of everywhere and hooked up to all kinds of equipment. Then I was in for about eight hours while they cut a hole in my head about an inch behind my right ear and took out what turned out to be a rather large acoustic neuroma that was leaning against my brain stem. They almost never find them there.

I could write all kinds of other things about my surgery, and in time, I probably will. It seems pretty bizarre that after being exposed to the wonderful Grandpa Sam for 18 years, and being raised by two goofy people with solid values, and after dedicating myself to reading and literature and learning and writing, not to mention an amazing abundance of popular culture, the defining experience of my life is that one of my nerve cells went nuts and grew a great big lump right in the middle of my brain, and someone had to cut open my head and take it out.

For now, what made me write this just today is that I came across something I wrote when I was in the hospital after my surgery. I was in for about a week altogether; I came home the morning of Christmas Eve, the 24th. I was in surgery on the 17th, and spent the next two days in the recovery room instead of intensive care. After that I went to a private room, so I wrote this on one of the days I was in there. I hardly slept when I was there, so I may have written it in the middle of the night. I had taken with me to the hospital a steno pad on which I had made notes about the surgery before hand, like what the doctors said to me, schedule dates and times, and so on. Now I was also writing down when they brought me pain medication, because I wanted to make sure they brought the next dose when I was supposed to get it. But I wasn’t in an awful lot of pain from the surgery. It was that they were taking me off the high does of prednisone, and each time the dose went down, I was being torn apart by muscle aches, mostly in my legs and back.

By this time, it was clear that I wasn’t ever going to hear anymore in my right ear, and that the right side of my face was never going to move of its own free will. But my face hadn’t “fallen” so I didn’t look all that grotesque. They were coming from physical therapy to teach me to walk without banging into walls all the time, and to go up and down steps. I remember that one afternoon Jack came to visit when I had to go to PT and he watched while I tried without much success to go up and down two steps. I think if I had to watch my grown child do that, I couldn’t.

So here’s what I wrote in my steno pad, and kept. A couple of years ago I typed it into a file on the computer so I wouldn’t ever lose it. At the top of the page I wrote

I believe that

-I will have some bad days. Most days will be good.

-On bad days, my neck and scar will be stiff and sore. I will have eye sutures removed. I will feel pain, and discomfort, and nausea.

-On good days I will have some stiffness and soreness but probably not much pain. I will not walk into walls or fall down or step on the cat.

-In February I will do laundry again and I will start to prepare to move around the kids' rooms.

-I am very happy that I am alive. I want to see my children grow up, and I will. I still want to go to DisneyWorld.

- It is okay to cry on bad days.

- Life is not all black and white. Mostly it is light gray.

- When I have pain-killers I feel pretty good.

- It is okay to feel good whenever you can.

- Sometimes I dribble.

And I still believe it, all of it, after eleven years.

ENTRY #16

In 77 Days, I Will Be This Many

[copied from dland]

I want a cool birthday countdown counter on my diary page, and I want a cool birthday, too

My mind is all a-swirl with anticipation at the upcoming-ness of my annual birth anniversary. Really. If there's anything I look forward to with the eagerness of a ... (imagine a cool metaphor here) ... it is my wonderful birthday.

It's not as if everyone doesn't have one, so this then becomes the epitome of my negative/positive, optimist/pessimist thing, that personality quirk that I tend to apply to everything. But the birthday thing goes to both extremes, herewith:

Everyone has a birthday. Every day is somebody's birthday. There are places all over the world where impoverished or otherwise calendar-impaired aboriginal peoples don't even know what birthdays are. It is so not a big deal.

But it's MY BIRTHDAY! MINE, MINE, MINE! It's so cool, it's going to be MY BIRTHDAY!

And not for two months yet, and I'm already experiencing this exultation over this event that will be ordinary in the lives of everyone else I know and don't know. MY BIRTHDAY!

Will anyone notice? My family will notice and say happy birthday and that's nice. Maybe I'll bring in cupcakes for the lunch crowd at school.

Let's review the other landmark birthdays:

18 - Don't remember a thing about it. Actually, I think there was a teacher strike and the school was closed so I probably sat at home by myself thinking "Wow. Birthday. Wow."

19 - Landmark because it was my best birthday ever, at least up until then. Living in the dorm, great friends, great day, about 75 degrees in January.

21 - Not so very good. Feeling not so very good, later found out unpleasant medical news, taken care of, but birthday rather sucked.

30 - FREAKED OUT! 30 ... moi? Couldn't be. I was weird all day until someone pointed out that my mother might have feelings on the subject, since her baby was 30. Once my perspective was properly adjusted, I was okay.

40 - Felt pretty damn good to be 40, considering that I'd had a brain tumor removed at 39 and was still around to be 40. Excellent birthday, 40.

50. 50 is coming. In 77 days, exactly, but I couldn't get the birthday counter site to work, so I had to use my fingers and a calculator. Another day, perhaps.

50 in two months, January 12, 2003. I want ... I want this:

I want a birthday party, with all Mickey Mouse plates and napkins and cups, and I want everyone to wear hats and have noisemakers, and I want to hear "Who's the leader of the club that's made for you and me?" playing in the background. I want to get presents that I can open, but I don't care what they are. They don't have to be anything but key chains from the Disney store or the like, but I want them to be wrapped and I want to rip off the paper. I want a cake, but not a chocolate cake, although it would be okay if the cake were made out of Hostess chocolate cupcakes with the squiggle on them. I like those. I want all the people I care about to be there, but not other people I don't care about. I could make a list; I guess there would be about 20 or 30 people. That would be a good number.

50. First birthday without mommy there. (Too old to call her mommy? No problem; I don't call her that anymore.) I thought it sucked about four years ago, when I called her on the morning of my birthday and she told me all her aches and pains and forgot totally that it was my birthday until daddy yelled in the background "Say happy birthday!" and she said it. I was pissed off, there she was so caught up in herself that she didn't even remember her own offspring's birthday. I wasn't asking for a lot, just that she pull out of her own inner-directed angst for 30 seconds. She did apologize afterwards, so that was nice. And she was dying, after all, even though she didn't reach the end until just this past May.

So this year, 50. No phone call to or from. And most likely, no party, Mickey Mouse or otherwise. That's what happens when you tell your loved ones there's no need to make a fuss. They fucking believe you.

Nothing is ever as clear as you think it is, or should be, or can be. Nothing, at least, that I've ever thought about.


ENTRY #11

Self-Centered? Me?

[copied from dland]

I may be self-absorbed, but I don't think I'm self-centered, as in the world has to revolve around me and my concerns. If anything, I don't think that anything should revolve around me at all, since I'm a pretty insignificant cog in the machine. So I thought I would record my observations about the very good yet very absorbed individual with whom I share my workspace.

For someone who survived the hardcore guts of the 1960s, he is amazingly unconcerned with the welfare of those around him, except in a kind of generic-people-don't-deserve-to-be-randomly-murdered kind of way. Peace and love are okay with him as long as they're happening to him; he really doesn't give a shit about anyone else. The deceptive thing is that on first appearance he absolutely appears to be a renegade from a commune. Then he'll start to talk about his portfolio. I think he just doesn't like getting haircuts, and it adds to his hippie mystique. Also the fact that he owns one single sports-jacket, and this, a brown corduroy deal with a belt across the back (circa 1975) adds to his hippie mystique. He's really about as hippie-like as George Bush.

Every so often I have a conversation with him that leads me to say to our third colleague "I'm going to kill him today." Generally she will answer "Not if I get to him first," but sometimes she'll just say that he's not bothering her today. So here's what bugged me today:

He was extremely concerned that our work schedule for next week turned up three late shift days for him and only one for me. (Monday doesn't count.) He's been stewing over this for weeks. It really just worked out that way. I'm sure that there's another week somewhere down the road where I've got three late and he's got one. The difference between late and early, by the way, is leaving school at 2:30 or 3:30. This is the time by which most people in the real world (i.e., not working in a public school) are just getting started. It's also significant here that we worked out a schedule so that each of us would have exactly the same number of early and late days each month, and for the whole year. Okay, I worked it out, and he agreed to it.

So finally I said I would make one of his late days mine. His emailed reply was "Thanks, I think that's very fair."

Bullshit. It's fair to him because I gave him back the one fucking hour out of 180 days. One hour. How is it fair to me? Did he offer to give me back one of his precious little hours?

Here's the difference: although I'm miffed about his obsession with this and his pouting until it worked out his way, to me, the hour doesn't mean a thing. What could I possibly need to do at 2:30 that I can't do at 3:30? How can it mean that much to him? And even if it does, why does he think it shouldn't mean as much to me? Why, ultimately, is one hour of his life so much more important that one hour of mine?

And there it is. I guess when you're that self-centered, each hour means another opportunity to do what you want, get what you want, and screw anyone else. And when you can't imagine why the universe would care about you to begin with, the hour doesn't mean a thing.


ENTRY #8

Metacognition, and All It Stands For

[copied from dland]

Some of what it stands for, anyway. When a graduate school professor overused this word a few years ago, I never thought it was anything but more of that education bullshit, another buzz word to throw around. She wanted us to use the process of metacognition constantly, to make it a part of everything we do every day. Because I had the time to add another process to my daily chores.

According to this babe, metacognition means that you should think all the time about how you think. You should understand how you think, why you think the way you do, you should examine every move you make and think about it: why, why, why, why, why, why. This was not my most favorite class ever.

So it was education-ese bullshit. But the truth is, I do think about the way I think. Not so much the why, but I sure am aware of thinking all the time and about the way I do it. The way that I'll usually come up with a logical approach, ever the Vulcan. I can remember things that happened to me way way back, like when I was three or four. Okay, not so strange in this family where pretty much everyone remembers practically back to the womb. But I remember thinking things when I was three or four, and I remember the way I figured things out then, or understood things.

Is that normal, or does it just make me more weird? Does it matter whether I'm normal or weird? I think I like being weird. Sadly, I have always craved normal, too.

I wonder if going to therapy ever really makes you better, or just keeps sending you down different twists the road until one day you're dead. You never do find the end of the road, or maybe that's what the bright light is.

Next time: Heaven, and what I plan to do there


ENTRY #5